Technology trends come and go, but few have generated the excitement, momentum, or long-term impact that mobile computing has. Mobile computing impacts people’s lives at work and at home on a daily basis. Many companies and individual developers are looking to become a part of the movement but are unsure how to best utilize their existing skills and assets. The Xamarin suite of products provides new opportunities to those who already have a significant investment in C# development skills and .NET code bases, and would like to enter into this new, exciting world.

This example-oriented guide provides a practical approach to quickly learn the fundamentals of Android app development using C# and Xamarin.Android. It will lead you through building an Android app step-by-step with steadily increasing complexity.

Beginning with an overview of the Android and Xamarin platforms to provide you with a solid understanding of the underlying platform, we gradually walk through building and testing a Points of Interest Android app using C# and the Xamarin.Android product. You will learn to create ListView and add detail view to your Android application. You will handle application behaviors on orientation changes, before learning the different techniques to manage resources and layouts to support multiple screen sizes. You will then access a SQLite database in a cross-platform way and add location features to your application. Finally, you will add camera integration to your application and deploy your app to the various Android app stores.